Conference: Risa Cohen from Tequila Works

How Your Culture Can Add Spice To A Global Product

This talk was interesting because it informed me how to use your experiences in your life, especially cultural ones to make your work unique and also create the chance to connect with your audience through your work. I liked that the company always strived to keep their work true to them instead of conforming to whatever is popular in the video-game industry.

Tequila Works is a  video-game company studio based in Madrid, Spain. It was founded on August 28, 2009. 

Risa Cohen has worked with companies such as Pixar Studios, Microsoft Studios and Atari Games, her role was to help guide the team to product the best quality work they can and then find the most efficient way it can be promoted on different platforms.

Tequila Works artists' goals are creating surprising experiences for the audience.

Some of the games they have published:

• DEADLIGHT

She stated that originally the game Deadlight was not meant to be a zombie- theme based game but due to production requirements and what a certain company thought would gain more publicity, they had to go down that route.

They wanted to create games that were not commonly seen in the mainstream video-game industry, because most current characters from Hollywood are stereotypical and similarly look alike in appearance.

A factor they believe to understand is that emotions are universal and connecting with audiences through emotions is more effective than just producing a game with cool guns and explosives.

''Culture does not mean different'', it can allow you to tell interesting, personal stories.

• RIME

Another game produced by Tequila Works which they were really proud of, was titled Rime.

Their aim was to convey the story without the use of words. The theme was vulnerability, an emotion that the audience could connect with because at times throughout the game the character is faced with feeling vulnerable in unusual surroundings.

Abandonment is another emotion that is brought up in the game.
They had direct inspirations from different types of historical environments to construct the space in which the character explores.
The lighting used in the game is unique and does really help to convey the storyline because at night the boy is more scared of his surroundings than during the day.

Participating in exercises for light and colour and how they compliment each other helped inspire the visual look of the work.

• PAPA Y YO

Papa Y Yo is another game Tequila Works has produced, this game stood out to me, and I had not played or heard of it before but the way it was made I thought was really unique and could see how certain audiences would connect with the character. 
This game was a personal topic to one of the artists that worked on it, as it was his way of dealing with the past.
It sparked an interest in me because the artist used the idea of merging two different worlds using film and digital environments together. The main character in the game escapes his tormented life and abusive father and enters a dreamlike state which leads him on different adventures. The transition from videos illustrating the life of the boy and then switching to the fantasy digital environment worked really well. I enjoyed watching the cinematic of the game and think it worked really well with the concept of the story and has inspired me to think of other ways film can be incorporated into video-games.